Carey Mulligan, Mamie Gummer, and More Celebrate the Premiere of Suffragette

Enfranchisement, equality: powerful words pervasive in today’s political climate, and the film Suffragette, which premiered in New York City last night, deftly probes the history of women fighting for the right to vote in England. Fittingly dressed by a British female designer—Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen—the film’s star Carey Mulligan spoke of the desire to ground the story in lessons applicable today: “I wanted it to feel like it was about today, not a documentary,” she said. “We’ve come a long way, but there’s a long way further.” The film begins in 1912, and in real life, British women got the same voting rights as men in 1928. (To put that into perspective, American women similarly achieved suffrage in 1920, while women in Saudi Arabia registered to vote for the first time this past August—appropriately, one of the promotional hashtags for the film was #thefightisnotover.)

Behind the film was a cadre of deeply impressive women who labored to make the project happen. The director, Sarah Gavron, conceived of the idea 10 years ago, and was joined by screenwriter Abi Morgan (known for The Iron Lady) four years later. As Gavron described her research process: “I didn’t learn these stories in school. What I gleaned was the Mary Poppins version.” But once she learned of the lengths these women went to, from imprisonment to hunger strikes to sweeping personal costs, she said, “It felt really timely to resurrect these stories.” Gavron and Morgan, as well as the film’s producers Alison Owen and Faye Ward, wore pouches designed in honor of the movie by Clare Vivier with the word “votes” inscribed in large block letters. Twenty percent of the bag’s proceeds will go to Every Mother Counts and will surely be of wide use stateside in the next year or so.

Further inspiring was Helen Pankhurst, the great-granddaughter of Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the movement portrayed in the film by the never-not-brilliant Meryl Streep. (The younger Pankhurst has devoted her life to international development and campaigning for women’s rights across the world.) When asked about the experience of seeing Emmeline’s story told on-screen (by Streep, no less!), Pankhurst—ever the activist’s descendent and an activist herself—praised the Oscar-winning actress but stressed, “What’s more important to me is that more people hear about that struggle, honor that struggle, and think about it in terms of their own lives.”